Eugene Loos

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Verified

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• PhD
• Professor (Associate) Emeritus at Utrecht University

Researchers have long used content analysis techniques to document the frequency of stereotypical representations in the media, but the interest in studying ageism in the media is relatively recent. We approach older people’s representation in the media by considering visual aspects—depictions in visual documents, such as photos and video materials...

Article published in: Information and Learning Science. DOI: 10.1108/ILS-04-2018-0031 Purpose – This paper aims to propose a new literacies approach to get insight into young people’s capability to detect fake news. Design/methodology/approach – This study is a replication of a US empirical study in The Netherlands to examine whether schoolchild...

Social media are increasingly being used by young and old as a source of information. Fake news is also on the rise. The role played by age in the consumption of fake news on social media, however, is unclear. This paper explores the generational differences in the consumption of fake news, first by discussing previous empirical studies in this fie...

The rise of Internet and the pervasiveness of communication and information technologies have allowed many societies to successfully reduce inequalities in access to information. However, the spread of fake news endangers the value and trustworthiness of the information being accessed. Although the dominant approach to reduce the spread of fake new...

ChatGPT is a fascinating AI text generator tool. It is a language model developed by OpenAI, a research and deployment company with the mission, according to OpenAI’s website: “to ensure that artificial general intelligence benefits all of humanity”. ChatGPT is able to generate human-like texts. But how does it work? What about the quality of the t...

One main purpose of smartphone use is to be socially connected, and in this sense, older people’s use of this device is no different from that of any other group. Smartphone use among this group is increasingly relevant given the growing number of older adults who lack meaningful social connections. Though the smartphone is permeating older adults’...

A narrative literature review about Chatbot use in higher education for exam boards

This article investigates the changes in the use of traditional and new media by different technology generations. Focusing on the changes in the use of Email, Chat and Social Network Sites by older people, it explores the process by which new media become ‘old’ and reach a saturation point. Collected survey data suggest differences in media use be...

ChatGPT-3, based on a large language model created by OpenAI, capable of generating human-like text, has been open to the public since November 2022. Since 2023, ChatGPT-3 has become a much-discussed educational writing tool. We elaborate on what we mean by referring to ChatGPT-3 as an educational assistant and define moral hazard. Then, we put thi...

CfP: Getting Insight into How Different Chatbots Answer the Same Questions and How Reliable They Are. From November 2023 onward, ChatGPT has been used by a growing number of people looking for answers to a variety of questions in fields such as education, science, law, finance, marketing, public administration, health, and leisure. Since it was mad...

https://arsaequi.nl/product/waarom-nepnieuws-niet-alleen-juridisch-en-technologisch-bestreden-kan-worden-pleidooi-voor-een-educatieve-aanpak/ Nepnieuws raakt ons allemaal. Toegang tot betrouwbare digitale informatie kan worden gezien als een zogenaamd primary good en is voor alle burgers van levensbelang. Door de snelle opkomst van sociale media w...

Since the invention of functional brain imaging in the early 1990s, this instrumentally and computationally expensive methodology has captured our interests in visualizing the working mind, especially that of super-ageing brains. Because neuroimaging research is costly, various communication strategies are deployed to increase its visibility and fu...

Fake news is a threat to the trustworthiness of digital information sources. Media literacy training that can be used to empower people to fight fake news - understood to refer to any kind of misleading information that could mistakenly be considered accurate, regardless of the mechanisms that led to its propagation - is mostly oriented toward youn...

Visual ageism is “the social practice of visually underrepresenting older people or misrepresenting them in a prejudiced way” (Ivan & Loos, ,2018, p. 164). In this chapter, we explore the visual portrayals of older adults in advertising and marketing strategies for technological products. We use a systematic literature review on research conducted...

This collection showcases leading research across the globe on ageing and the media. It examines different aspects and dimensions of ageing, as represented in a range of media, such as newspapers, magazines, advertising, graphic novels and comics, and websites. Older consumers’ voices are also heard about how they respond to media depictions of old...

The visualisation of older people as a group in the media can play a role in stereotype formation and reinforce stereotypes. It can even negatively impact older people’s self-esteem, health status, physical wellbeing and cognitive performance. Although empirical studies have been conducted on such visual representation, only a limited number of stu...

Our study focuses on myths about older people’s smartphone use. Self-reported data, from Eurostat for example, report access rather than actual usage and are of limited use. What respondents report does not necessarily correspond with their actual smartphone usage behaviour in everyday life. We therefore conducted a tracking study to gain insight i...

To reach a state of equal opportunity in our society, access to credible, accessible information [...]

Planning for aging populations has been a growing concern for policy makers across the globe. Integral to strategies for promoting healthy aging are initiatives for ‘aging in place’, linked to services and care that allow older people to remain in their homes and communities. Technological innovations—and especially the development of digital techn...

This chapter analyses the important role of images depicting the well-being of older people. The focus is on two opposing ways in which they are visually represented: low and high well-being. Ageing is placed in a historical perspective from antiquity to the early modern period by exploring their historical roots in texts. This is followed by a spe...

Technology companies, when considering the design of their products or services, tend to configure users by scripting appropriate user interactions with their technology. Older users are often seen as laggards who take no part in innovation processes. The scripts for technology use planned by technology companies rarely take older users into accoun...

Involving older people through co-design has become increasingly attractive as an approach to develop technologies for them. However, less attention has been paid to the internal dynamics and localized socio-material arrangements that enact this method in practice. In this paper, we show how the outcomes that can be achieved with user involvement o...

Background: In our information society, media use plays an important role. However, knowledge is lacking about whether specific birth cohorts show preferences for specific traditional or new media and whether technology generations can be identified across different countries. Objective: A cross-cultural research project was carried out with the ai...

Within the context of the intersection of the global megatrends of urbanisation, ageing societies and digitalisation, this paper explores older people’s mobility, with a particular interest in public transport, and a strong consideration of digital/ICT elements. With a focus on (smart) mobility, the paper aims to conceptualise transport, one of the...

This paper advocates for the importance of visual communication rights for older people to avoid "visual ageism," described as media practices of visually underrepresenting older people or misrepresenting them in a prejudiced way. It aims to present a set of policy recommendations using "designing for dynamic diversity" as the leading principle. By...

Older people and specifically women at retirement age are typically not associated with technological competence. However, some of them are avid users and little is known about the ways they incorporate technical devices in their everyday life. In this study, we depict how women’s relationship and family status at retirement age have an influence o...

Social media are increasingly being used by young and old as a source of information. Fake news is also on the rise. The role played by age in the consumption of fake news on social media, however, is unclear. This paper explores the generational differences in the consumption of fake news, first by discussing previous empirical studies in this fie...

Methods to involve users in design have long been used to create relevant content and increase the accuracy of product development. Demographic trends have raised the issue of the needs and demands of older people, especially with regard to digitization. In contrast to the high number of publications discussing the importance of involving people in...

This study evaluated the playability of an online escape game designed using a User-Centred Design (UCD) process for older adult players aged 65 and older. The participants were 30 Dutch older adults who played the game in pairs on tablets over 15 game sessions. The data were collected through surveys, interviews, and observation field notes. The r...

This article is about personalized information delivery in the Netherlands and is based on a review of empirical studies on this topic. The risk of echo chambers and filter bubbles is discussed and put in an international perspective. The focus is on the role government institutions, tech companies and scholars can play in this field. At present, t...

Ivan, L., Loos, E. F., & Bird, I. (2020). The impact of technology generations on older adults’ media use: Review of previous empirical research and a seven country comparison. Gerontechnology. ABSTRACT (1) Background In our information society, media use plays an important role. However, knowledge is lacking about whether specific birth cohorts...

This article revisits the concepts of ‘diversity’ and ‘visibility’, from the perspective of age relations to consider how these key metrics in the assessment of social inclusion through media representation can be usefully applied to the analysis of digital public service interfaces. Against the backdrop of changes in the age composition of populat...

The Ageing + Communication + Technologies (ACT) cross-national longitudinal study explores processes of displacement of traditional dominant media by innovative communication practices within the older audience of new media. Replicating Nimrod’s (2017) study of older audiences, data is collected on a biannual basis. The first wave of data collect...

Background: Many patients with cancer, including older patients (aged ≥65 years), consult the Web to prepare for their doctor's visit. In particular, older patients have varying needs regarding the mode in which information is presented (eg, via textual, visual, or audiovisual modes) owing to age-related sensory (eg, impaired vision and hearing) a...

Digital games are frequently described as media that can be crucial in strengthening relationships, enhancing cognitive skills and providing social support. Although considerable empirical research on the use of digital games in youth and stereotypes on gender or ethnicity has been widely covered, there have been few studies on age stereotyping in...

In our ageing society, health and social problems of older people are on the rise. A possible way to deal with these issues is to ensure older people remain actively engaged in society by stimulating social interaction with other generations, such as (grand) children. Playing intergenerational digital games could be a way to achieve this kind of so...

Digital practices in later life are not yet well understood. Therefore, this paper discusses the framework for a research design project that aims at tracing differences and similarities in how older adults use their smartphones in circumstances in and outside their homes in Spain, the Netherlands, Sweden, and Canada. The research questions of this...

Most hospital websites have not been developed in collaboration with patients and, therefore, rarely take into account the preferences and abilities of older patients. This study describes the systematic redesign of an existing hospital website in a co‐design process with patients and professional stakeholders (e.g. researchers, physicians, nurses,...

Purpose – This paper aims to propose a new literacies approach to get insight into young people’s capability to detect fake news. Design/methodology/approach – This study is a replication of a US empirical study in The Netherlands to examine whether schoolchildren were able to identify the spoof website “Save The Pacific Northwest Tree Octopus” as...

Het is bekend dat veel jonge mensen met hun smartphone dag en nacht van sociale media gebruik maken. Maar wat valt er te zeggen over het sociale mediagebruik door 65-plussers in ons land? Behoren zij tot een andere technologiegeneratie waardoor het gebruik van sociale media een minder prominente rol speelt in hun dagelijks leven?

The digital divide due to age is declining quickly. But this does not necessarily mean that the willingness to use stock photos depicting older people accompanying digital information is the same among all senior citizens. Three research questions are at the core of this paper: (1) To which extent can various senior citizens (women and men, younger...

Our society is ageing, yet new digital devices and services tend not to be designed with the needs of older people in mind. The wrong use of digital devices could lead to errors related to the characteristics of human-technology interactions. Problem solving is a key skill for such activities and devices. Running an unknown technological artefact m...

The aim of this study was to evaluate whether an ice-skating exergame can stimulate intercultural social interaction between refugees and Dutch children in controlled play sessions organized at elementary schools. We conducted an exploratory qualitative study based on observations of exergame play sessions and structured interviews conducted after...

Introduction: One-day fast track programs for cancer diagnostics and treatment planning are increasingly being implemented in health care. Fast-track programs are highly effective at reducing waiting times, and thus well received by patients and healthcare providers. However, these programs may also burden patients, as patients generally receive a...

Objectives: Multidisciplinary team meetings aim to facilitate efficient and accurate communication surrounding the complex process of treatment decision making for older patients with cancer. This process is even more complicated for older (≥70 years) patients as the lack of empirical evidence on treatment regimens in patients with age-related pro...

Exergames aim at stimulating healthy people or patients needing rehabilitation to do physical exercise to enhance their physical state (e.g., postural balance, muscle power). As older adults generally have more health problems than younger ones, such games could be beneficial to them. Since the introduction of the Wii gaming system by Nintendo in 2...

Involving teams from seven countries (Austria, Canada, Denmark, Israel, Netherlands, Romania, and Spain) this Ageing + Communication + Technologies (ACT) project offers a unique opportunity to explore possible processes of displacement of traditional dominant media by innovative communication practices within the older audience of new media. Replic...

Although older adults are increasingly using online health information, many websites are not senior-friendly, which might lead to user-problems and dissatisfaction among older people. It has been suggested that websites targeted at older adults should take into account age-related abilities and limitations, for example by providing the opportunity...

The aim of this study was to evaluate whether an ice-skating exergame can stimulate intercultural social interaction between refugees and Dutch children in controlled play sessions organized at elementary schools. We conducted an exploratory qualitative study based on observations of exergame play sessions and structured interviews conducted after...

This article focuses on Dutch older adults' use of digital devices in general, and digital games in particular, from an intergenerational perspective. We first present some facts related to provide insight into how Dutch older adults use such new media. Then, the case of the Dutch short film Pony Place is analyzed using a semiotic and narratologica...

The 'aging well' discourse advances the idea of making older people responsible for their capability to stay healthy and active. In the context of an increased ageing population, which poses several challenges to countries' government, this discourse has become dominant in Europe. We explore the way older people are visually represented on websites...

The ‘aging well’ discourse advances the idea of making older people responsible for their capability to stay healthy and active. In the context of an increased ageing population, which poses several challenges to countries’ government, this discourse has become dominant in Europe. We explore the way older people are visually represented on websites...

Over vluchtelingen wordt door de pers vaak negatief bericht. Vluchtelingen komen slechts zelden zelf aan het woord. Er wordt vaak over en niet met hen gepraat. Om te laten zien dat dit ook anders kan, is het project ‘schaatsen in de klas over de grenzen van talen en culturen heen’ uitgevoerd. 58 Nederlandse en vluchtelingenkinderen van 7 tot 12 jaa...

In March 2013, the Council of Europe (COE) launched the No Hate Speech Movement, a media youth campaign against hate speech in cyberspace. In this paper, we analyze a corpus collected from the COE's website. The corpus includes web site pages designed by the COE's campaigners, as well as materials such as self-made videos and photos posted on the b...

The main purpose of this paper is to review the benefits and factors to be taken into consideration for the design of intergenerational digital games. We conducted a systematic in Scopus, Web of Science, PsicInfo, Pubmed and Science Direct, finally including 16 empirical studies written in English. The identified benefits were found to fall into fo...

Dutch historian Johan Huizinga [1] viewed games as a fundamental aspect of life. As long ago as 1938, he observed that, next to “homo faber” (man the maker), there is also the concept of “homo ludens” (man the player). The aim of this paper is to explore what we can learn from previously conducted empirical studies about the motivation and capabili...

Previous studies have mainly focused on tailoring message content to match individual characteristics and preferences. This study investigates the effect of a website tailored to individual preferences for the mode of information presentation, compared to 4 nontailored websites on younger and older adults' attention and recall of information, emplo...

Background Health information is increasingly presented on the Internet. Several Web design guidelines for older Web users have been proposed; however, these guidelines are often not applied in website development. Furthermore, although we know that older individuals use the Internet to search for health information, we lack knowledge on how they u...

This exploratory qualitative study provides insight into the role that exergames play for seniors. 15 participants (aged 53-78) engaged in playing Your Shape Fitness Evolved 2 on the Xbox 360 Kinect, after which we conducted a semi-structured interview with each participant. We found that in all cases, the innate psychological needs of autonomy and...

Little research has focused on what precedes the processing of health messages to predict recall of information and whether age matters in this regard. To address this gap, this study investigates the relationship between attention and recall among younger (<65 years) and older (≥65 years) adults. Using eye tracking, we exposed participants to a we...

Society ages and our already extensive use of a host of different portable devices continues to expand. No leap of the imagination is needed to grasp that an exponential growth of the eHealth market is at hand. While the ageing of the baby boomers will have an impact on the global economy as a whole, of particular interest is the impact this will h...

New media play an increasing role in the everyday life of older individuals. They extensively use the Internet to search for health-related information. In our systematic review we found that online health information tools have been proven to be effective in improving self-efficacy and several clinical outcomes in older (≥65 years) patients. The a...

Online health information tools (OHITs) have been found to be effective in improving health outcomes. However, the effectiveness of these tools for older patients has been far from clear. This systematic literature review therefore provides an overview of online health information tool effectiveness for older patients using a two-dimensional framew...

Background Older adults are increasingly using the Internet for health information; however, they are often not able to correctly recall Web-based information (eHealth information). Recall of information is crucial for optimal health outcomes, such as adequate disease management and adherence to medical regimes. Combining effective message strategi...

Samenvatting Deze explorerende kwalitatieve studie geeft inzicht in de rol die exergames voor Nederlandse ouderen kunnen spelen. Met de vijftien participanten (53–78 jaar) die Your Shape Fitness Evolved 2 op de Xbox 360 Kinect speelden, zijn na afloop semigestructureerde interviews afgenomen. Het bleek dat de psychologische basisbehoeften autonomie...

Television was an everyday reality for millions of people at the beginning of the twenty-first century, and arguably remains one of the most important features of media-related leisure. It provides a fertile conceptual and empirical starting point for the exploration of the everyday leisure experiences of media audiences. In this article, contempor...

This study aims to investigate the effects of illustrations in online cancer information on older cancer patients' website satisfaction (i.e. satisfaction with the attractiveness, comprehensibility and emotional support from the website) and recall of information. In an online experiment, 174 younger (<65 years) and older (≥65 years) colorectal can...

Television commercials and advertising often represent the generation of older consumers as eternally youthful, active and rich. Representations of senior citizens as fragile people needing services and products to help them to survive are also used, but less frequently. As individual differences between senior citizens increase as they grow older,...

This study examines how adults pay attention to cognitive and affective illustrations on a cancer-related webpage and explores age-related differences in the attention to these cognitive and affective webpages. Results of an eye-tracking experiment (n = 20) showed that adults spent more time attending to the illustrations on the cognitive webpage t...

This paper will focus on intergenerational digital games between grandparents and their grandchildren, which could enhance not only their physical and social well-being but also social bonding between them. The introduction (section 1) will show that this is a topic which has been neglected in digital game research. Therefore, after having discusse...

Eye tracking can help researchers to understand the difficulties older adults have when using websites, applications, mobile devices, and other technologies. Yet to date, there have been few studies that have examined age-related differences in eye tracking and the user experience. In this chapter we will show how eye tracking can be used to gain i...

The effect of personalization and age congruency on website satisfaction and recall of information was tested in a 2 (personalization: personalized vs. nonpersonalized video) × 2 (age congruency: congruent vs. incongruent) experimental design (n = 275). Personalization was found to be an effective communication tool to predict recall of information...

This study examined the effect of adding cognitive and affective illustrations to online health information (vs. text only) on older adults' website satisfaction and recall of cancer-related information. Results of an online experiment among younger and older adults showed that illustrations increased satisfaction with attractiveness of the website...

http://link.springer.com/content/pdf/10.1007%2F978-3-642-39191-0.pdf This study proposes a theoretical framework for patient website functions and provides empirical input for the framework. A pilot survey among younger (aged 50 – 64, M = 55.95, SD = 4.48, n = 21) and older (aged 65 – 84, M = 72.79, SD = 6.33, n = 14) cancer patients revealed that...

This study investigated the effects of personalized audiovisual information in addition to text on website satisfaction and recall of cancer-related online information in older lung cancer patients. An experiment using a 3 (condition: text only vs. text with nonpersonalized video vs. text with personalized video) by 2 (age patient: younger [<65yrs]...

This article discusses how we can ensure that various senior citizens (women and men, living alone or together, full of vitality or in fragile health, coming from different cultural backgrounds) can identify with images representing themselves so they continue to have access to information sources in our digitising information society. First, the r...

Objective This study investigated the effects of personalized audiovisual information in addition to text on website satisfaction and recall of cancer-related online information in older lung cancer patients. Methods An experiment using a 3 (condition: text only vs. text with nonpersonalized video vs. text with personalized video) by 2 (age patie...

Accessible health information: A question of age? Aging and digitalisation are important trends which have their impact on information accessibility. Accessible information about products and services is of prime importance to ensure that all citizens can participate fully as active members of society. Senior citizens who have difficulties using n...

Generational Use of New Media examines and contrasts how younger and older people, representing different generations, engage with the new media that they increasingly encounter in everyday life. Exploring the various assumptions about the degrees to which younger and older people are more or less willing to use, or are capable of using, new media,...

Populations are ageing at a rapid pace in the majority of western countries. At the same time, these countries are increasingly becoming more digitised and information is supplied to a growing extent in digital form. To what extent is there an actual problem for senior citizens who are looking for accessible information? Is age the deciding factor...

To fight against info-exclusion in an aging society, it is important to make website information available to all generations. If we want to achieve this goal we need to know the impact of not only age but also gender, educational background and frequency of internet use. Therefore, this paper presents the results of an explorative Dutch eye-tracki...

The number of senior citizens is increasing quickly. The use of new media is also on the rise in our information society. Websites are an important tool for (local) governments to provide information to their citizens. If we want information supply through ICT to remain available to senior citizens in order to ensure their access to the digital inf...

Recent developments in new media devices and applications have led to the rise of ‘social media’, also denoted as ‘Web 2.0’, ‘social computing’ or ‘participative web’. This shift in ICT, from unidirectional to conversational media of mass self-communication has lowered the technological thresholds for everyday users to cooperate for their own benef...

In modern society (technological) innovation is greatly pushed both by technologists, economy and politics. However it is clear that push only is not a sufficient means to get people to adopt. Quite often the adoption is very slowly or might be rejected at all. At other moments the innovation is adopted in a quite different way than the technologis...

Informatie wordt tegenwoordig steeds meer in digitale vorm aangeboden. In deze trend gaat een gevaar schuil voor al die ouderen die geen internet kunnen of willen gebruiken omdat ze bang zijn zich op onbekend terrein te begeven en fouten te maken. De onbekendheid met dit nieuwe medium zou de toegang tot informatie voor deze ‘non-liners’ kunnen bepe...

Zijn de verschillen tussen oud en jong wel zo groot als het gaat om het gebruik van digitale informatie? Het gaat te ver om van een digitale kloof te spreken, maar socialisatie, levensfasen en leeftijdgerelateerde functiebeperkingen spelen wel een rol.

In 2006 werd de nieuwe zorgverzekeringswet ingevoerd. In dit artikel staat een explorerende case study centraal die ons inzicht geeft in de wijze waarop burgers in dat jaar hun zorgverzekeraar gekozen hebben. Daarbij wordt vooral ingegaan op de rol van risico-perceptie tijdens het keuzeproces. In de afgelopen decennia is bij de overheid het denken...

Do elderly people really navigate websites in a different way than younger people do? Or are the differences within this group (such as those due to gender, education, computer experience and cultural background) bigger then differences between younger and older people? This paper first discusses usability studies (mainly, in this case, eye-trackin...

Dit boek gaat over computervaardigheden van ouderen in vergelijking met jongeren. Het accent ligt op het navigeren op websites. Het onderzoek van Eugène Loos en Enid Mante-Meijer bestaat uit een internationale literatuurstudie en een explorerend eye-trackingonderzoek bij drie websites (de websites van ANBO, de gemeente Maarssen en Univé). Daarbij z...